It's official: Austerity in Europe has failed and the Stimulus worked

Damn straight, and it took Europe a long time to realize that it was following self destructive policies. The Republicans, of course, will take a lot longer to recognize that austerity cannot work to promote growth. Had Obama been able to pass a range of other stimulus measures and state gov'ts not cut so much, we'd be seeing even higher growth, even with Europe shooting itself in the foot.

You guys are joking, right? Perhaps I just don't have a good ear for irony, but I'll play along...

You think AUSTERITY is what landed Europe in its current predicament? That's like a fat man having a heart attack and blaming it on the diet he started two days ago.

Obama presides over the slowest economic recovery in memory and his stimulus saved the day? Wrong again. Obama has his boot on the neck of the economy and it would have recovered a lot more by now without his radical policies assailing it at every turn.

The same mentality that drove Europe off the cliff is now firmly entrenched in the United States government and the U.S. is heading toward the edge with its foot buried on the accelerator.

Swellzner wrote:

You guys are joking, right? Perhaps I just don't have a good ear for irony, but I'll play along...

You think AUSTERITY is what landed Europe in its current predicament? That's like a fat man having a heart attack and blaming it on the diet he started two days ago.

Obama presides over the slowest economic recovery in memory and his stimulus saved the day? Wrong again. Obama has his boot on the neck of the economy and it would have recovered a lot more by now without his radical policies assailing it at every turn.

The same mentality that drove Europe off the cliff is now firmly entrenched in the United States government and the U.S. is heading toward the edge with its foot buried on the accelerator.

You don't have any idea what you're talking about. Give ONE example in modern political history of a country who successfully brought themselves out of a deep recession using austerity measures. I can give you about 100 examples of countries who did it through stimulus/deficit spending. You're talking like a 7th grader... or a modern day "conservative." Infant babble....

Swellzner wrote:

You guys are joking, right? Perhaps I just don't have a good ear for irony, but I'll play along...

You think AUSTERITY is what landed Europe in its current predicament? That's like a fat man having a heart attack and blaming it on the diet he started two days ago.

Obama presides over the slowest economic recovery in memory and his stimulus saved the day? Wrong again. Obama has his boot on the neck of the economy and it would have recovered a lot more by now without his radical policies assailing it at every turn.

The same mentality that drove Europe off the cliff is now firmly entrenched in the United States government and the U.S. is heading toward the edge with its foot buried on the accelerator.

Saying that the slow recovery is Obama's fault is the most ignorant and narrow minded claim that you can possibly make. The US economy is just part of a much larger global economy. It would be irrational for Americans to invest while Europe stands on the brink of collapse and China approaches a hard economic landing. You cannot ignore outside events, nor make broad generalizations about it. The situation in Spain is vastly different from that of Greece. The situation in Ireland is vastly different from that of Portugal. And the situation in Japan and Italy is vastly different from that of the UK. They all suffer from the malaise of slow growth and high debt, but you should learn to understand when it is the case that high debt causes slow growth and how it is different from the case of slow growth causing high debt.

Nobody with at least halfa brain thinks the stimulus was ineffective. The key word on yourslow recovery is "recovery".

Wow, OP, did you watch Fareed Zakaria and repost on LR? ;-) http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/22/zakaria-europe-suffers-from-too-much-austerity/

TCB wrote:

Those who say that the economy could have grown faster under different management (Romney) are absolutely lying. Romney would have taken a similar course as David Cameron, and the results would have been just as disastrous as they are in the UK.

Sooooo, according to you, anyone that thinks the economy could do better under anyone but Obama and his Keynesian economic policies is lying?

But you on the other hand have a bright and shiny crystal ball and predict with stunning accuracy everything that happens in the world?

STFU loser!

Europe has been driving up debt with government stimulus for millenia now. They haven't even gotten around to real responsible fiscal disipline yet and you declare that the later is the problem. That's like saying the cause of the housing crisis were people paying off their mortgages.

Europe is in recession partially because of austerity. However, Europe was forced to adopt austerity because of reckless spending in the good times. So in a way, both sides are right. Conservatives are correct in that governments should (in general) be more prudent about spending. However, JM Keynes was right too--you have to spend money to get out of a recession. The paradox of thrift...look it up.

The U.S. is doing okay...for now. That is about the best you can say. The big difference is how the U.S. is one country with one currency. Europe's mess is multiple independent and diverse countries linked to the Euro.

Sounds like Obama and the democrats should thank George Bush for starting the stimulus and making it easy for them to claim credit.

Not a one of you, not a single one of you know the first thing about economics. At best you're espousing economics 101. Lets leave the economic policy making to the experts and armchair quarterback something that's maybe....a little simpler.

Europe?

So let’s see - in the past three years, the United States has ceased to have any meaningful budgeting at the national level, with the consequence that Washington piles on roughly a trillion dollars of new debt every seven or eight months.

In the past year the federal government has added the equivalent of the GDP of Canada in new debt.

And who’s buying it?

The Chinese?

Not so much - they've got pretty much all the Washington IOU's they need.

No - sixty-one percent of debt issued by the Treasury is bought by the Federal Reserve – which is to say the left hand of the U.S. Government is lending money to the right hand of the US Government.

Indeed, had it not been for the French and Germans et al inaugurating the new century by inventing a currency for an artificial jurisdiction with even less connection to economic reality (the European Union), it's likely that the markets would have yanked the rug out from under the dollar by now.

Nonetheless, in a land where every mewling babe in the American nursery is born with a debt burden of just under $200,000, Obama brags that only his party is "compassionate" to have no plan whatsoever even to attempt to do anything about this, no way, no how, not now, not ever.

So your plan is to get out of debt by creating more debt?

Sorry, I grabbed the wrong post. This was meant for the person who thought stimulus worked.

Relevant Chart - just to ground the discussion in some data:

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-us-vs-uk-growth-2012-4?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Money%20Game%20Chart%20Of%20The%20Day&utm_campaign=Moneygame_COTD_042512

Hahahhahahhaahhahahahahhahah thanks I needed a good laugh today.

See you in the bread lines. ;)

W wrote:

Sounds like Obama and the democrats should thank George Bush for starting the stimulus and making it easy for them to claim credit.

Thanks GW.

Seriously, the money they threw at the banks in the fall of 2008 really saved a potential catastrophe.

So your plan is to get out of debt by creating more debt?

The closest the U.S. has come to getting out of debt was in 2000. Projected budget surpluses could have been used to shore up social security and bring the national debt to zero by 2012. Instead, 49% of the people voted for Bush and the rest is history.